Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Defence

It is a privilege, as always, to follow the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), but I am going to focus in today's debate solely on some very simple points about the campaign in Afghanistan. Let me say from the outset that I agree with a great deal of what has been said by a number of earlier speakers. I agreed with about half of the speech of my old friend, the right hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells)—I shall deal with that more fully in a few moments—and I agreed even with the Liberal spokesman, the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey). He jeopardised the career of my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Holloway), so I am going to do the same back to him—again, I shall come back to this shortly. I agreed most of all with the analysis provided by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), a former Foreign Secretary, who showed that his intimate grasp of foreign policy issues is as firm as always. My right hon. and learned Friend talked about whether the Afghan war is a war of choice or of necessity. There is no doubt that, back in 2001-02, it was a war of necessity. Whether our deployment into Helmand in 2004-05—in the so-called Operation Herrick 4—was a matter of necessity, I am much less sure. At that point in time, I was extremely doubtful about the value of that deployment. Indeed, in a policy discussion at the time, when many experts were talking in a meeting about how to achieve victory, I am afraid my response was, "Well, I do not know how you will achieve victory, but how will you recognise it? What does victory consist of? Is it the defeat of al-Qaeda and driving them out of Afghanistan? Is it the defeat of the Taliban? Is it the destruction of the drug trade? Is it simply the protection of Pakistan? Is it simply the creation of a stable Government or is it the creation of a Jeffersonian democracy complete with proper treatment of women and all the things we like to see in a civilised state?" The truth of the matter is that I got no answer, which is unsurprising because at that point in time, the Government did not appear to have an answer either. Indeed, their justification for the deployment varied from week to week. If it is not clear what a victory looks like, it is certainly clear what a disaster looks like. A disaster would be a precipitate withdrawal from Afghanistan now. Whether it looks like the American scramble out of Vietnam, with helicopters on the roof of the embassy, or whether it looks like the Russian deployment when the last general—I think it was General Gromov—walked out in a dignified manner over Friendship bridge back into mother Russia: either way, it is a disaster on several counts. First, such a withdrawal would be a disaster for all the decent Afghans trying to make a decent living under the regime as it stands, and particularly for the Afghan middle class, many of whom are leaving in droves as we speak. Secondly, it would be a disaster for Pakistan, which has enough internal problems without having a further cause of them on its borders. Thirdly, it would be a disaster for the western alliance—I use that phrase deliberately, rather than the phrase, "international alliance" used by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea, as that is how it would be portrayed on the streets by Islamic fundamentalists around the world. The effect of that on our battle, or conflict—whatever one wishes to call it—against terrorism is my most serious concern, because that is a gift we do not want to give them. My argument starts from the point that if there is any material chance of victory—I do not care whether it is one in five, one in 10, one in two, or two in three—we must take it, to avoid that disaster. The Foreign Secretary made the obvious point—I do not mean that disparagingly—that any victory comes out of a military, civil and political dimension. That is self-evident. We must not lose sight of the fact, however, that the civil and political are not replacements for the military component. The civil component can only work if the military component works. There is no point in building schools and hospitals if next week they are burned down. There is no point in training teachers and nurses if they are hanged or decapitated. There is no point in trying to run a country if one cannot deliver justice on the ground, which, I am afraid, is the circumstance in Helmand today. Even in Lashkar Gah, ordinary Afghan citizens will walk eight miles to a Taliban village to get justice in a Taliban court, because they do not trust the justice system they currently have. Security comes first and it is important that our leaders, whether the Prime Minister or the President of the United States, grip that nettle tightly. Our problem is that both our leaders are undoubtedly civilised people who do not like, and are not comfortable with, sending young men and women to their possible death or maiming in a foreign country. That is entirely understandable and a civilised reflex. Unfortunately, however, doing half the job, or sending half or a quarter of the number of troops that would be enough, is a way of increasing the number who are hurt and who die in our cause. When General McChrystal calls for 40,000 troops, that is what we should give. McChrystal is not well known in this country but he is very well known in Washington. He is the man to whom the Americans largely attribute the success of the surge. He was effectively the cutting edge of the surge, and has as much claim to that success as Petraeus. His judgment and report was incredibly well thought through and carefully designed. If we intend to win the war, or campaign, we must take the whole bite, not half of it. I say that with an American political dimension in mind: next November, the mid-term congressional elections will take place. If, by then, we do not see material progress, the collapse in public support for the war, which we already see in both countries, will accelerate and will probably be reflected in the political classes too. In those circumstances, it will be very difficult for America to stay in. Therefore, we must grip the nettle tightly. On the civil dimension, sometimes when I listen to colleagues talking about schools, hospitals and the like, I feel that they are talking to their own constituents. However, there is no constituency in the country, no matter how poor, that does not look wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice to an ordinary Afghan. The people on the ground in Afghanistan are poor beyond our imagination, and for them poverty is a life-threatening condition, especially for their children and families. Their concerns are having enough food to eat, enough firewood to get them through the winter, a roof over their head and some sort of job. Massive unemployment of a degree we cannot imagine among young men in Afghanistan, particularly in southern Afghanistan, is as much a contributor to the recruiting drive for the Taliban as anything else I can think of. When we talk of the civil effort, the first, most important and predominant approach should be to the economy of Helmand province and the Pashtun areas. The north of Afghanistan is not doing badly, but the southern part is doing very poorly. If we do not get a grip on that, people will die from starvation as much as from any other cause. As the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) is listening, let me say that I was pleased to hear Brigadier Cowan, the current commander in Helmand, talking about roads and seedcorn projects, because such projects, markets and provision of jobs and incomes are more critical than one can imagine. My last point is a simple one and is made as constructively as possible. We have talked in the House time and again about Afghanisation, which has become fashionable in the past 12 months. There is no doubt that that is the only route to a stable Afghanistan. I absolutely agreed with the point made by the right hon. Member for Pontypridd about the contrast between Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is a much easier country to run than Afghanistan. Iraq has 600,000 security troops; our plans only go up to some 200,000. The American counter-insurgency manual says 600,000, and the deputy commander of the international security assistance force said 600,000 when I spoke to him. That is the minimum number that would create a stable state. I started by saying that I did not know what a victory looked like. The conditions for withdrawal with honour and with some form of positive conclusion to the campaign are those that leave in place a stable state that will not be perfect, but which can manage its own affairs, which we can deal with and Pakistan can deal with, and which delivers a reasonable prospect of life to Afghan citizens. If we achieve that, the pill will be less bitter than the one our citizens have had to swallow so far.